Jay Nichols

Jay is a previous member of the Champlain Valley Educator Development Center Board and Executive Committee. Jay was on the Board and a member of the hiring committee that appointed Lauren Wooden to be the organizations second Executive Director. Jay has taught several graduate classes through CVEDC and Saint Michael’s College. Annually, he facilitates the Leading Vermont Schools: Understanding the Principalship Cohort group that provides year-long training in a course structure designed specifically to support new and relatively new Vermont Principals.

Educational Leadership Experience:

Jay is currently the Executive Director of the Vermont Principals’ Association. Prior to that he served as a principal and superintendent for over two decades in Vermont. On May 18, 2017, Nichols was selected as the Vermont Superintendent of the Year.

Nichols Educational & Leadership Consulting (NELC)

Since 2010, Jay has had his own leadership consulting company. Among other services, NELC mentors and coaches’ school and school system leaders, provides various trainings, culture surveys and analysis, and a host of other leadership needs in and out of the education system.

Personal Life

Jay is an avid cyclist, political scientist, leadership junkie, and sports enthusiast. He has four children, three that are grown up with their own families: Dustin, Elizabeth, and Paul, and a daughter Kendal who is in her senior year of high school. He has six grandchildren ranging from 9 to 1 years old: Konnor, Colin, Karson, Corrine, Camille, and Kaylyn. He is married to Christine Nichols and lives in Berkshire, Vermont with his wife, daughter Kendal, and oldest grandson Konnor

Courageous Conversation Training starts Fall 2019

Math for Struggling Learners

Math for Struggling Learners This year, the course will be co-taught by Megan Grube and Erin Oliver. It runs June 24-27 at CVEDC and includes mathematical explorations, techniques for investigating student thinking, ways to build learner independence, and approaches for making instructional decisions to implement interventions.The emphasis is to first gain a deep understanding of how a struggling student understands key concepts, and then to build an intervention to address her thinking.

Using a Literacy Workshop Model – One Day Workshop

The workshop model of instruction provides a comprehensive structure that best supports learning according to the findings of cognitive science. The workshop model is an inclusionary approach, using a framework in which teachers can share focus lessons as well as provide guided, targeted instruction for small groups of students while other students build skills through purposeful, independent practice.